- The modern Republican Party is the offspring of Barry Goldwater, who wrote “The Conscience of a Conservative” (1960). His manifesto started a framework that gave rise to devolution, which was taken up by important men such as Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush.
- The Devolution Revolution began in 1995 when the Supreme decided in favor of state’s rights in United States v. Lopez, in which Congress tried to assert that gun possession in and around schools impacted interstate commerce.
- Lately Conservatives have taken to state offices because of their inability to hold federal ones. Despite usual Conservative Republican tactics, they have tried to expand state power; conversely the Democrats have tried to emphasize federal power over the states.
- “What’s notable about all three episodes [court cases] is not just that conservatives have abandoned their faith in federalism, but that they’ve done so in disputes where the case for federalism was most compelling.”
- “Principled opponents of centralized power have never been found on the left, and they are vanishing on the right as well. When it comes to federalism, we are all liberals now.”